You know the ones I mean.

‘Taking the lid off’ stuff we mostly couldn’t give a toss about anyway.

Every couple of months a dubious news item spawns a shitload of opinion/bullshit/dodgy recollection/psychic predictions/WHY branded as fact. And an absolute avalanche of supposedly revealing documentaries.

Don’t know what I’m batting on about?
Consider this….
The butler telling all.
Some woman who made a wedding dress pontificating on the bride’s state of mind.
A ‘love rat’ exposing the goings on in failing marriage.
Some body language expert deducing from a photograph that X is unfaithful to his wife.

I think you may be getting my drift by now.

This stuff is formulaic in the extreme. Choose a celebrity – or better still a family with some notoriety – and forensically examine the person or persons you have selected as much to their detriment/canonisation as possible. Season the pot with copious amounts of ‘expert opinion’, statements from as many ‘friends’, ex-servants, and people who once saw them in Walmart, as possible, and, if it still feels bland, add a few carefully calculated half truths.

Market it ruthlessly and with little or no regard for the feelings/reputation/mental health of the victims, and you have a licence to print money.

And whose fault is it? The fault of every bored person who watches it, every airhead who quotes it, and everyone who comments on social media. Me? I can’t see why the ever-f*g heck anybody dignifies this sort of bottom wax by watching it or talking about it.
Bloody well stop it.
And that includes me.

So I shall hie me to a strip club and feast my eyes on swinging buttocks – which are far less offensive than shite telly…

The Master Stonemason was in his eightieth summer and he was all but blind, still his hands knew their work and each chisel stroke was as clean and precise as it had been in his youth. Once he had cut and carved he began the laborious task of polishing, trusting nothing to the hands of his sons, or his grandsons, or the apprentices who watched in something like awe. When one of his sons would have intervened to help the old man, his only surviving daughter stepped in front of her brother.
“Leave him. Let him make his last work as glorious as his first.”

When the last letter was incised and the last square inch of the finest Carrera marble was polished to a soft pure shine, the old man lifted his eyes to the sky and rested at last.

One by one, each man in the yard stepped up and laid a gentle hand on this thing of beauty the old man had crafted.

Last forward was the Master’s daughter. Her homely features were shaped into the tenderest of smiles and she laid her cheek against the cool marble.
“It is perfect,” she said softly, “now come home to your dinner”.
The old man took her proffered hand and they walked away together – leaving the young men to carry the headstone the Master had created to its place on the grave of his beloved wife.

©️jane jago

One is often asked to do reviews of other aspiring authors’ literary endeavours and after over a dozen forays into those depths, one has now made it very clear that only books of Outstanding Quality will be reviewed. Everything else appears on one’s annual ‘Did Not Finish’ record – a scroll of shame where many who have thought themselves worthy now lie banished, with a brief sentence to explain their failing.
There you will find people like JK Rowling (‘a puerile effigy of urban fantasy, masquerading as a morality tale, but in drag’) and JRR Tolkien (‘anyone who has to make up their own language to cover their poor literacy skills is truly execrable!’) and Tolstoy (‘the summum-bonum of Russian over-saccharine emotional indulgence.’)
So you may imagine one’s complete consternation when deep in the throes of composition, the door to one’s inner sanctum was thrown open and the vision of loveliness that is Mumsie threw herself on the chaise in the corner of the room. She was breathing heavily and the bluish Gauloise smoke from her nostrils reminded me of some delicate mythical creature.
“Moonie,” she said with some determination evident in her tones, “Moonie you are at best a poor excuse for a son. At worst you are a complete fucking waste of fresh air.” She paused for breath, leaving me hanging on her words like a delicate bushbaby in the darkest woods. Mumsie continued portentously, “I have just come from the pub where I have had to endure the complete embarrassment of hearing other people reading the utter crap you post on those females’ book blog, and pissing themselves laughing. I was tempted to put my foot down and stop it altogether, but if you are going to teach you need to learn.”
She extracted a dogeared paperback from her pocket.
“Read this, you deluded bastard, and perhaps it will give you half an idea what proper science fiction is all about.”
Then she was gone, leaving behind her the aroma of Pernod and cigarette smoke.
One was about to consign the horribly insanitary book to the waste bin when her fiercely moustachioed face reappeared around the panel of the door.
“You better fucking read it Moons. There will be questions.”
And so I read it. From cover to cover.
And I am still none the wiser.

My review of ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ by John Wyndham

To summarise:  Something happens in a very uninteresting English village. Then some women get pregnant. Then they have some strange children. In the end, things blow up.

The writing is absolutely plain, plain and black. The characters are rendered with such mundane realism as to make them even less interesting than the locality. I did not find myself transported in any way and the necessary immersion in the author’s world never occurred. The dour realism, the lack of magic, and a story whose point passed me by completely, all of these meant that in a normal situation I would have cast aside the shabby little volume after a dozen pages. But Mumsie must be obeyed. So finished it was, and reviewed it is.

All one can say is that if that is a science fiction classic one has no idea why. One reached the end as unimpressed as one was at the beginning.

No stars.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

One hundred thousand colonists don’t simply vanish… No bodies. No evidence of an attack. Just gone.
Ethan Walker likes his life as a freighter captain. It’s easy work with no need for anything heroic. That is, until a run to the Starlight Colony on the far edge of Coalition Space, ends with a shocking discovery.
Everyone in the Colony has disappeared.
The shipping company orders him to leave immediately and get his cargo back safely, but when he reports the situation to FleetCom, they tell him to stay off the planet and wait for them to get there. Unfortunately, that gives his passengers a chance to make a desperate play for answers about the fate of the colony.
He’s left with no choice but to attempt a dangerous rescue, even knowing that to defy orders will cost him everything.

The Olympus Dawn dropped out of cruise as it passed the outer threshold marker, ten light-hours from Starlight Colony. It was a picture-perfect sub-light transition as the residual photons snapped clear of the ship’s hull with the usual flash of infrared that swept up to ultraviolet across the forward screen. From outside, it would have looked like the typical hellish white-light flash of a photon boom, but from the inside, it was a wonderful phototechnic cascade of unimaginable colors.
“All hands rig for space-normal operation.” Captain Ethan Walker made the announcement more as a formality than anything else. His small crew had done this hundreds of times, so they knew their jobs. With only a couple exceptions, they’d be snoring and waiting for something interesting to happen.
“You just like the sound of your own voice don’t you?” Nuko Takata said from the seat beside him. When he glanced over, she winked. She’d been his copilot for over two years, and she knew him well enough to understand sarcasm was his preferred language. They had the ConDeck to themselves and she had her legs up and crossed on the corner of the console as she thumbed through the latest newswave on her thinpad.
“Marti, plot a course for the transfer beacon and set speed to half-light,” he said. As the ship’s resident Artificial Awareness, Marti did most of the real piloting and at least it wouldn’t give him any lip. Usually.
“There is a problem with that, Captain,” the AA said in its rich contralto voice. “The beacon seems to be down.”
“Down?” Nuko said. Dropping her feet to the deck, she tossed her screen to the side and leaned forward to look at her console. “It could be in eclipse but the nav-time says that won’t happen for another sixteen hours.”
Starlight and its co-orbiting sister planet Shadetree were some of the earliest exoplanets discovered by an old sky survey system that used transiting observation to find worlds orbiting distant stars. Kepler 186 was 178 parsecs from Zone One, but its stellar plane lined up with Earth, so a ship coming in on a direct line from the home system might catch the worlds lined up with each other. When that happened they’d have no beacon to use to get a navigational fix. The colony’s beacon sat at the barycenter of the binary planet and winked out for almost an hour out of every forty-eight.
“You’re sure we’re in the right system?” he asked, poking at her. She wasn’t the navigator, but since she’d punched the buttons last, it had to be her mistake.
“If it’s Tuesday, this has to be Starlight,” she said, shaking her head.

Wings of Earth: 1 – Echoes of Starlight by Eric Michael Craig

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

You know a bad day is about to get worse when you are in the kitchen quietly chugging the cooking brandy and the Hon. Rodney invades your space with a fatuous smile running down his pinkly chubby chops. He looks at you with the Fundador in your fist and his smile fades, leaving behind only the vague mulishness of a public school boy with a secret. You attempt a smile and he perks up instantly.
“I say, old girl, I’ve bought one of those outdoor kitchen thingies. Thought it was about time yrs truly helped out with the old commissariat.”
This is the point where your heart attempts to drop out of your bottom, and a headache beyond even the power of brandy from the bottle leaps into action behind your eyes. But there is worse to come. Because the urge to burn food in the garden is not to be denied. Sadly, this is not the time to for the normally effective spousal veto, and nor will it avail you to offer to meet him halfway. He will have spent what amounts to the national debt of a small Slav republic on a metal monstrosity, and he Will use it – say what you will.
My advice is to get out a couple of heavy-bottomed tumblers and propose a toast in his best single malt. He’ll be so relieved that you are being ‘sensible’ that he won’t even grumble about you glugging back about a hundred quid’s worth of whisky in one swallow.
When the awful thing arrives, and is installed (almost inevitably by a bunch of young men with man buns and body ink and names like Bullfinch and Labrador) your deluded spouse will immediately decide to throw a party. No amount of reasoned argument will persuade him to have a practice run first. And nor will he even consider reading the instruction book (which runs to 3000 pages of very fine type badly printed).
At this point you have two courses of action open to you.
Plan A. Leave the stupid overgrown adolescent to sink in his own ordure.
Plan B. Make your own stratagem to save his face.
I, personally, lean towards the second. Having an indebted spouse is infinitely more satisfying (ultimately) than the short pleasure of watching him sink in a midden (even if it is of his own making) until the sewage closes over his prematurely balding cranium.
And what is plan B?
It’s pretty simple. Obtain, without grumble, whatever meat your deluded spouse proposes cremating and also offer to be responsible for such irrelevances as bread and salads. He will be thrilled with his wonderful wife, so much so that daily depredations to his whisky will be overlooked smilingly.
But now the crafty bit. Also purchase suitable numbers of boned chicken thighs and some bags of those skinny chips our colonial cousins call fries. Set the chicken to marinade in olive oil, garlic, herbs, and cooking brandy. When the Hon. Rodney throws the first offerings to the gods of ineptitude onto the hot coals, slide trays of chicken into the oven (after liberally daubing with someone or other’s proprietary barbecue sauce). When the flames in the ‘outdoor kitchen’ are at their highest throw the chips into the deep fryer.
They should be about ready when your red-faced and embarrassed spouse appears in the kitchen. In desperate straits.
Pat him kindly and bring out the chicken.
Help him to carry chicken and chips to the buffet table. Then help yourself to a very large whisky….

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff next week!

It ain’t all beer and skittles
The sun don’t always shine
Some days winter dribbles
And you run fresh out of wine
It ain’t champagne and chocolate
Coz them things make you fat
You’re gonna have the odd regret
You can be sure of that
It ain’t all beer and skittles
And I ain’t the perfect wife
And if the sweet brings bitter
Well, that’s just the way of life

©️jane jago

The door slammed shut behind him and the solid sound of bolts shooting home followed, reinforcing the sense of finality. The room was a depressing dull grey from ceiling to floor. It was square with two beds, bunks, running the full length of one sidewall and essential facilities in the far corner. Zero privacy from either his cellmate or, through the door hatch, from the custodius. Above the door a vent the size of his fist was vibrating with an annoying humming-whine as it reluctantly circulated fresh air.
“Llewellyn? What did they drag you in here for? Sticking your nose too deep in someone else’s business?”
The voice was vaguely familiar, though Dai was slow to place it as the shaven head of the man sprawled on the lower bunk was not. His puzzlement must have shown because the man swung his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up.
“I don’t suppose you remember me. It was some months ago and I’m sure you’ve been a busy Submagistratus since then.”
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t…”
The other man laughed, which turned into a cough part way before he was able to speak again. “Gods! Politeness. Not heard a word of that since they locked me in here.” He pushed himself to his feet and straightened the green tunic, before offering a formal greeting. “Tertius Cloelius Rufus. It is an honour to share my captivity with you. A pleasure. You may recall we met in Viriconium before these unfortunate events.”
Dai found himself shaking the outheld hand as if they were at a social event or meeting, as his memory searched desperately for the name and face. When it came, he snatched his hand away and stepped back involuntarily.
“You were the cunnus of a medicus involved with a group holding vicious sex parties that led to the death of young streetgirls.”
“No need to use titles here,” the older man said brightly and then smiled at his own joke. “You can call me Rufus. It’ll make a change from seven-eight-one-one-two-six. It’s those little things you get to miss the most in this place. By the way, I hope you’re not hungry, you missed the evening meal. Nothing til tomorrow now.”
Dai felt a curl of cold revulsion in his guts.
“You disgust me.“
“Really?” Cloelius sounded unconcerned. “At least I’m not a traitor like you. That tends to evoke more outrage in our society at every level than any sexual adventures a man might embark on.”
“The difference is,” Dai snarled, unable to keep the contempt from his voice. “I am not guilty of the faked-up charges against me, but I know for a fact you are guilty as charged. I caught you red-handed, literally. And the blood of a good Vigiles was shed that night too.”
Cloelius sighed and sat back on his bunk. “Appearances can be very deceptive Llewellyn, and like it or not your guilt or innocence will be decided in a court of law not by whatever you might choose to say or believe.” He lay back as if reclining on a lectus. “You might discover that I am in fact the innocent one and you turn out to be guilty. Now that would be an interesting outcome, don’t you think?”
The chilling realisation that the corrupt medicus spoke the truth staggered Dai. The words leeched all strength from his muscles and he sank down to sit with his back against the cold grey wall.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded, when the moment of weakness had passed.
“What a strange question. It’s not as if I can just stroll along to the atrium or visit the baths, is it?”
Dai lifted a hand in protest. “You know what I mean. You must have been here for months. Yours was an open and shut case. I signed off all the evidence myself back in Martius. It only needed a hearing before an independent Magistratus to…”
“Sentence me to death?” Cloelius gave a rasping laugh. “You show yourself the true Briton, Llewellyn. There are people I’ve met who have been held here for the last ten years.”
Dia bridled at that.
“But it’s against the law. No Citizen can be deprived of his or her freedom. They are tried and if found guilty, sentenced either to death or whatever fine is due.”
“Ah, British logic,” Cloelius said, his tone shifting to that of a teacher explaining simple facts to a schoolboy. “Those I speak of are Citizens who stand accused of capital offenses and are awaiting their day in court. They all have powerful friends in Rome using every legal wrangle there is to keep them from coming to trial. Some of the crimes have to be prosecuted within a certain time limit, so if they can delay that day long enough they can walk free. Others are commuted by prolonged negotiation from death to a fine. Everyday is a barter day. But you worked here in Londinium as a Vigiles so you really should know that.”
It was true that he had heard the rumours so it was not really a surprise. But his day-to-day clientele at that time had been almost exclusively non-Citizen criminals.
“You have powerful friends?”
Cloelius hunched one shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “Perhaps I do. Or powerful enough to keep me from trial so far. Don’t you? I am assuming you must do to have secured both Citizenship and a plum administrative appointment.” He leaned forward as if offering a confidence. “At the very least they might be able to have your Citizenship rescinded which would give you the chance of commuting your sentence to hard labour instead of the arena.”
That was something that had not occurred to Dai as a possibility before. It was true that committing any serious crime could lead to an application for the revocation of an awarded Citizenship – something given could be taken away. An option not open to those born with Citizenship status. But the kind of hard labour criminals were condemned to was brutalising.
“I don’t see that would be much better,” he said, hearing the bitterness in his own tone. “Just a slower way to die.”
“Perhaps. But at least, my British friend, you have options. Who knows? We may even grow old together in this cell.”

From Dying to be Innocent the 9th Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Money. When was the last time you saw any actual cash money?

Me neither.

Until.

The other day I had to waddle down the village to the post office (now tastefully housed in a very hygienic corner of the funeral director’s hushed premises) and acquire some actual moolah, because the plumber very kindly knocks off the vat if you pay him cash. The little girl behind the plexiglass screen very sweetly shoved the notes into a brown envelope I provided, so it wasn’t until I got home that I discovered  that twenties are now plastic.

I laughed so much that I right about pissed myself.

You aren’t going to tell me that you missed that little irony are you?

You are?

Okay, then, let me elucidate.

All around me are females (and a few very put upon males) of a certain age. Many of these bloody fossils are vociferous in their condemnation of the cashless status of society.

In the days when a game of euchre and a pasty was a possibility, the lounge bar would be full of these crusty old naysayers. I see them now, bellied up to the bar and waving fivers at the sorely harassed barmaid.

“You’ll never see me paying with plastic,” is their mantra as they waste hours counting small denomination coins into piles on the scratched mahogany of the bar.

Seems as if karma has caught up with them good and proper. You declare your aversion to ‘plastic’ Mrs Frobisher I think to myself, and then you go and wave a note above your head never once seeing that it is ‘plastic’ too…

That is seriously funny. Or maybe not.

Me?

I run up a modest bar bill and slap my card on the screen before tottering home singing immodestly.

My mate Mabel watched me do this for about three months then bit the bullet. She still don’t have a credit card, as the silly old moo would get in a right mucking fuddle, but she slaps her contactless debit card with all the je ne sais quoi of a  Kardashian in a high-end boutique.

In a rare moment of sobriety, I conducted a straw poll of the halt, the lame, the feckless and the demented as they sat their asses down for the last village OAP dinner before Armageddon.

Being asked why they don’t like to pay by card I got the following responses.

“I won’t know what I’ve spent.”

“I will run up a huge bill.”

“I like the feel of money.”

“My son/daughter/other ‘concerned’ family member doesn’t want me to.”

Struck me as so sad that I bought the buggers a round of sov blanc.

In a nutshell then…

On very rare occasions progress is A Good Thing. This might be one of them. 

It’s liberating.

I no longer need a purse or a handbag.

Got my phone in one pocket. My keys in the other. And my American Express card up me knicker leg.

Oh yes, you sad lot.

Have plastic. Will travel…

Elron and his sister-wife Elanda dallied in the dappled shade of the forest. They walked hand in hand, stopping every few steps to kiss and caress. Elanda slipped away and ran a few steps, for the sheer joy of him catching her in his strong arms and bearing her down into the sweet loam to ravish her with tender savagery.
They strayed closer to the homes of the human creatures than was their habit, standing for a while to watch as the white-clad and silent women of the sanctuary bore a wrapped bundle to the flat rock of sacrifice, leaving it there before scuttling away on silent feet.
“I wonder what gift they spare to the old ones,” Elanda spoke idly, even as her beloved’s clever hands worked their magic. He bent her over a convenient tree branch and they began their unending game yet again.
This time the little mewing cries did not come only from Elanda’s throat as they continued even after she drooped like a spent lily.
“It’s a child. The old one will dine on child tonight.”
Elanda walked on soft feet to where the babe lay and pulled back the blanket from his fair features. She gazed enraptured.
“Look Elron. Is he not beautiful?”
Elron looked, without too much interest, but found to his surprise that the child was indeed of surpassing beauty. Gold of hair, blue of eye, and possessed of skin so thin and white that the blue veins could clearly be discerned beneath their fragile coverlet.
“He is indeed beautiful. Shall we keep him?”
“We could. But what of the old one?”
“I will call him up a fat boar. He will like that better anyway.”
Elanda’s smile was a thing of witchery, so the deed was done. They retraced their steps, only this time The beautiful fae had a beautiful child in her arms. Once away from the grove of the old ones, she stopped and seated herself on a sweetly scented bank of wild flowers.
“The child must feed,” she declared opening her garment.
Elron expected to feel jealousy at the sight of another mouth at his beloved’s breast, and he was surprised to find that all he felt was excitement as the child’s perfect lips encircled Elanda’s long pink nipple.
He watched for some while, until, impelled by some appetite he didn’t know he possessed, he bent his handsome head to suckle the other breast.
As quickly as a bolt of summer lightning, the child stirred in Elanda’s arms and struck like a viper sinking sharp and yellowish teeth into the pulse that beat in the big male’s neck.
Elron was paralysed and could only groan in agony as the creature drunk his life force. The eyes that had looked so blue in the sacred grove now glowed red as the succubus fed.
Seemingly unknowing, Elanda crooned a lullaby and stroked the baby’s milk-white skin…

Jane Jago

Alright you lot it’s me, Jacintha Farquar, here again to shine a magnalight of common sense into the weird and wacky dark spaces you writer types choose to inhabit, and brush away some of the cobwebs of illusion you seem to have draped all over your craft.
You still reading?
Good, then perhaps you might even learn something today – but I for one am not holding my breath.

Life Lessons for Writers – Nine: Why Do It?

I mean, why?
Seriously. There are over a million new books a year appearing on Amazon and most of them are written by someone exactly like you – a wannabe JK Rowling.
What amazes me is that you seriously believe that if you hit publish on whatever you just wrote somehow, magically, you are going to become a world famous author and have everyone praising your book to the skies.
Could it happen?
Yes. You could win the lottery too – in fact you probably have more chance of winning the lottery.

So, back in the real world.
Why do you do it?
If the answer is for the money, stop now. Go away and look at the top earning jobs and careers. Then cross off all those that require or bestow celebrity status and what are you left with?
Pick the one you like best and do that. Do not bother being a writer.

If the answer is for the fame, then you would do better to think about vlogging or just walk naked through the capital city of your nation with your body painted in tessellated shapes in primary colours. That would make you more famous than most of those who have a book for sale on Amazon will ever be.

You still here?
So it’s not for the money or the fame?
Then why do you do it?

This is a question you need to ask yourself very seriously in front of the mirror so you can see if you are lying when you answer, because I still think half-of you believe that you are somehow the special exception to the rule who will one day get fame and fortune, movie deals and TV mini-series.

The rest of you, hello.
I’m seeing two sorts here.

The first lot of you know exactly why you write and your ambitions are set at where you know you can pitch. You likely passed up doing that creative writing course for one in business and marketing because you figured early on that if you want to make a living as a writer that is what matters more than the content. Or you’ve learned the hard way and are now focused 90% on the marketing and 10% on the writing. And well done to you. I doubt you’ll ever be JK but you stand a good chance of being a self-supporting writer.

The second lot, well you know why you write too and it has very little to do with fame or fortune. It comes down to having stories to tell and knowing there are a few folk out there who will read and enjoy them. For you, it is plenty reward enough that someone somewhere has had a few hours of escapist entertainment because you wrote that book. Well done to you too – I loved your last one!

If you still don’t know why you write, you need to figure it out and fast, because if it is more about ego or money than telling stories, you are looking in the wrong place and wasting everyone’s time, mine included.
Now bugger off I’ve got important work to do catching up with the old crowd down the virtual Dog and Duck.